A branch prediction unit may include or be associated with a loop detector that may, for example, detect loop behavior in a branch and that may track the number of iterations of such loop that are executed. A loop detector may include, for example, 128 entries. Other numbers of entries may be used. Entries in a loop detector may include an area to store a tag of a branch. Entries in a loop detector may also include a real counter, that may be in the form of a data storage area to store a counter of the number of actual iterations of the loop, a speculative counter, that may be in the form of an area to store a speculative counter of the number of iterations of the loop, and a max counter, that may be in the form of an area to store a predicted maximum number of iterations of a branch that are likely to be executed in a loop.